Colors….Brightness….and Contrast — How do you get it right?

[Darby Edelen]

[jorberg] “something I’ve always had trouble with is making sure that the colors that I’m seeing on screen, actually look the same once I view them on a tv or someone else’s computer monitors.”

There isn’t yet a wholly accepted method of color calibrating consumer TV/video displays, as a result your footage will look slightly different on each and every TV you ever view it on… Sad but true =)

An external monitor will definitely help you get a better grip on what it will look like on a TV (not every TV, just a TV).

If you’re producing video for a device that does have a color profile, then by all means you should load that bad boy up in AE! But your footage will look different on any device that doesn’t use the same profile…

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Steve Roberts]

Get a Decklink card and a calibrated broadcast monitor. Then you’ll match the calibrated monitors at the stations broadcasting your material.

But it’s not likely to match Grandma’s old Zenith. It never will, unless you bring it into the studio.

Any other situations? You can’t control them, except with color profiles as Darby mentioned.

[Eric Christians]

Yeah I have to agree with Darby and Steve. Everyones’s tv different so you can only set your levels/colors to broadcast standards and leave it at that. A vectorscope will help you get colors/levels to those standards. Do a search on vectorscopes to learn more about them.

This reminds me of a client I did a tv commercial for a few years ago. She was very animate that we do not mess with her business’ logo as the colors were very important to her business. She gave me an .ai file of her logo and the the only tweaking I did to her logo was to scale it down to 720 x 480 to be used for tv. Made the spot and sent it out with the sales rep on a dvd for the client to approve. A couple of hours later I got a very angry phone call from the sales rep telling me that the logo’s colors were off and how dare I mess with the colors after the client made a point to tell us not too. I told the Sales Rep to come back to the station and watch the spot on a professional broadcast monitor to see we didn’t touch the colors. The Sales Rep came back to the station rather irrate & upseet but watched the spot on the broadcast monitor and did a 180 with her attitude. I have never seen an attitude switch that fast before or got an apology so fast either.
The Sales rep immediately called the client and invited her down to the station to view the spot, the client saw it once on the broadcast monitor and approved the spot right there. I asked the client before she left if the tv she had in her office had a viewer color tone option on its menu. She said yes, she switched it to a more red tone cause she likes to have more color on people’s faces when she is watching tv. I smiled and shook her hand as she left the building.

All you can do is setup for broadcast standards and if the client is picky about colors invite them to see it on a professional broadcast monitor.

KTTC-Redbeard

[Brendan Coots]

Agreed. Blackmagic card (the $295 standard version should do fine) plus any broadcast monitor that has Component BNC inputs is your best option. Search B&H Video for good monitor options @ http://www.bhphotovideo.com.

Without a professional grade monitor and a high-quality signal path (i.e. component video or better) you will never know for sure whether your colors are correct.